Artist Panel

Lecture

The Baker Museum Lecture
Panel Discussion with the Artists of Florida Contemporary

Edouard Duval-Carrié, artist
Ya Levy La’ford, artist
Robert Rivers, artist

Join the artists included in Florida Contemporary 2022-23 for a lively panel discussion. Florida Contemporary is an annual exhibition presentation of work by a select group of notable visual artists practicing in Florida. Highlighting the breadth of artistic approaches to personal, local and global themes, Florida Contemporary invites visitors to celebrate the state’s vibrant art scene. The artists selected for the 10th edition of the exhibition are Edouard Duval-Carrié, Miami; Ya Levy La’ford, Tampa; and Robert Rivers, Maitland. As in the past, the exhibition features artists with diverse artistic interests and backgrounds who hail from a variety of locations throughout Florida. These dynamic artists testify to the creative energies and intellectual vigor present in the state’s visual art world.

This presentation is part of the exhibition Florida Contemporary 2022-23.

Edouard Duval-Carrié

Edouard Duval-Carrié

Edouard Duval-Carrié (b. 1954) is an internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Miami. Born and raised in Haiti, Duval-Carrié and his family fled the regime of François Duvalier as a teenager and subsequently resided in Puerto Rico, New York, Montreal and Paris before settling in Miami. He earned his B.A. from Loyola College in Montreal and later attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Duval-Carrié’s works, which deal with the complexities of the colonial past and legacy in the Caribbean and its diaspora, have been exhibited in major museums and art institutions in the Americas, Africa and Europe. The Art of Embedded Histories (2019), Decolonizing Refinement (2018-19) and Mémoires Encastrées/Memory Windows (2018) are recent solo exhibitions to name only a few. In 2022, his series The Black President was on view at the church of St. Kunigundus in Kassel, Germany, as part of Documenta 15, a prestigious exhibition held every five years. His works are housed in numerous museums, including Pérez Art Museum Miami and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. In 2018, Duval-Carrié was the inaugural recipient of The Ellies Michael Richards Award.

Ya Levy La’ford

Ya Levy La’ford

Ya Levy La’ford (b. 1979) is known for her bold, geometric, site-specific installations, built with a unique vocabulary of intersecting lines and gestural repetition. Her labyrinth patterns are both an exploration of self and place, as well as the complexities of the human community. Complex yet minimal, La’ford’s work is experienced through a wide range of media including paint, sculpture, installation, video and sound. La’ford is based in Tampa and has exhibited her work in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been the recipient of numerous awards.  

Robert Rivers

Robert Rivers

Robert Rivers, professor of art at University of Central Florida in Orlando since 1980, is an accomplished printmaker, draughtsman and painter. Born in Guntersville, Alabama, in 1950 and a former footfall and rugby player, he earned a BFA in graphic art from Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, and an MFA in printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Rivers has extensively exhibited his work in the United States and the United Kingdom, and his works are housed in the permanent collections at the National Gallery of Art and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, Scotland; and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, Alabama, among others. In 2021, he was the winner of the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at the Orlando Museum of Art, where he showcased 69 panels of his ongoing epic series, The Promised Land.